


knowing thunder gives away (what lightening tries to hide)

by nineteen88



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Au Pair, British, F/F, Not Canon Compliant, nanny - Freeform, no magic, slowburn, swanqueen - Freeform, teacher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nineteen88/pseuds/nineteen88
Summary: “Ms Swan,” Regina hissed down at woman banging a merry tune on her front door, “do you have any idea what time it is?”Emma tripped down the front step onto the pavement and clearer into view, a hand extended up to her as if she might be able reach Regina from where she was standing.“It’s Tuesday now,” Emma giggled out in possibly the worst Australian accent Regina had ever heard (why Emma was choosing to be Australian was beyond Regina).
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 31





	1. An Inexplicable Australian Accent

**Author's Note:**

> A/N 
> 
> This was always going non magical, but this was never designed to be as AU as it has turned out to be. 
> 
> The title is taken from a Laura Marling song 'Blow by Blow' which you can find on Spotify.

**An Inexplicable Australian Accent**

There was banging. So much banging.

Regina tapped at her mobile to see the time; a little after one in the morning her phone illuminated into the darkness and yet there was a tremendous amount of noise coming from outside.

She sat up to listen for it properly.

It was persistent, almost rhythmic, and it was coming from below her bedroom window.

It could mean only one of two things either her house was being robber or Emma Swan was drunk. Given she very much doubted a burglar would knock before breaking into her home, she could only assume the latter. It had been a long time since Emma had drunkenly woken her up, yet there was something cathartic in its familiarity.

She moved to her bedroom window, the wood of the Victorian slash windows roughly rubbing together in her haste to open it.

“Ms Swan,” Regina hissed down at woman banging a merry tune on her front door, “do you have any idea what time it is?”

Emma tripped down the front step and appeared on the pavement and clearer into view, a hand extended up to her as if she might be able reach Regina from where she was standing.

“It’s Tuesday now,” Emma giggled out in possibly the worst Australian accent Regina had ever heard (why Emma was choosing to be Australian was beyond Regina).

Regina pinched her nose: she had a full day of teaching to come—not to mention the misfortune of having to see a horrific group of Year 10s twice, once before lunch when their hunger tended to leave them agitated and then again last period when they were simply grisly in their anticipation for the end of the day—what she did not need was Emma, drunk at her door in the early hours, to leave Regina too sleep deprived to be able to deal with twenty-five disagreeable teenagers. They were hard enough when she’d had a full compliment of sleep and energy to waste on them.

“Go home,” Regina spoke down to her, before suddenly realising what she’d suggested and how Emma might achieve it; it was late autumn in Cumbria, it would have been far too cold for her to walk the twenty minutes home in the middle of the night if she was sober and had her wits about her. Given how drunk Emma was, Regina wasn’t sure she’d even make it down the street without collapsing in a heap and falling asleep where she fell, her frozen body left to be discovered by Dr Hopper when he took his dog out for a walk in the morning.

“Wait there,” she commanded before closing her window and hunting for her dressing gown.

Having to go downstairs in the middle of the night to open her door to her very drunk friend wasn’t what she’d envisioned when she’d gone up for an early night, yet she allowed Emma to stumble into her home nonetheless.

“Why are you here?” she sighed, helping Emma to remove her jacket to hang on the banister, before nudging her to the foot of the stairs so she could take off the blonde’s boots too.

“I was out drinking with Ruby,” Emma managed in a voice that Regina thought had meant to be a whisper, “she went home with that boy Billy!” she added pressing her index finger to her lips, “don’t tell Granny.”

“No, darling, I mean why are you here: as in, in my house?” Regina was knelt before her, tired hands struggling with the fastenings of Emma’s boots, as the blonde’s head kept dropping lower and lower, “Phone,” she requested waking Emma with a couple of gentle slaps to the knee realising that getting an intelligible answer out of Emma as you why the blonde was in Regina’s home rather than her own was going to be nigh on impossible.

Regina stared at the navy toenail that had poked free from the hole in Emma’s sock as Emma fumbled about her pockets looking for her mobile. Regina focused on the chipped paint and wondered if the other nine nails were the same colour. Thinking about that was easier than worrying about what fate would befall her friend in the morning.

Killian was not going to be happy. Killian, from what Emma sometimes (almost) told her, was seldom happy. He was also notoriously jealous. If Emma was found to have drunkenly arrived on her doorstep rather than his—Emma might have hell to pay. Emma had never once said that he was violent, and Regina didn’t think Killian was, but she didn’t know what form his jealousy took—Emma would never tell her. Regina also knew that Killian had asked, rather demanded, that Emma stop spending time with her; Regina not trusted not to corrupt Emma with her lesbian ways.

Regina fixed her thoughts on Emma’s toenail and chose to wonder why Emma had picked navy when everyone knew her favourite colour was red.

“Jacket!” Emma proclaimed excitedly shaking Regina from her thoughts as the blonde was trying to rise to a stand much quicker than her tired and inebriated state could handle.

“I’ve got it,” Regina eased her back down on to the bottom stair and retrieved the phone from Emma’s jacket pocket. She fired off a quick text to Killian letting him know Emma was staying the night with Ruby. “Come on, dear, let’s get you to bed.”

Given Emma’s state, Regina didn’t bother trying to get her to do her teeth or finding her any clothes to change into. She simply lay her down in her son’s old room, pulled off her jeans, and tucked her in. She grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the bathroom and filled a glass of water from the tap to leave on the nightstand besides a graphic novel of Henry’s he’d decided not to take to university with him.

“I just really miss the kid, you know?” Emma mumbled as Regina bent down to kiss her forehead, wrapping Emma’s drunken frame under an _Avengers_ duvet.

“I know, me too,” she agreed as she turned off the light and headed to her own room.

Getting back into bed she sent a text to Ruby making sure Emma’s alibi was secure in case Killian ran into anyone before Emma had a chance to speak with him. Then quickly followed it up with a _Happy Birthday_ doubting Killian would have let his wife out to play without a good reason and a lot of persuasion.

She took one last look at the time before locking her screen and sending her room into darkness. Her Year 10s were going to be hell when she saw them later in the morning.

*

People often complained about Mondays, Regina never understood that. For Regina Monday’s were a fresh week, a fresh start, anything could happen; people were refreshed from the weekend, reenergised, had had the time to catch up on everything they let slide over the working week. Monday’s were good days; full of promise and optimism.

It was Tuesdays Regina always found the hardest. Day two of the working week, so far away from the coming weekend and yet too close to the disappointment that Monday had brought. Tuesday was just a constant reminder of how badly Mondays always went, how nobody had miraculously changed over the weekend, how the job hadn’t improved; no sudden pay increase, no greater investment in equipment, no wash of enthusiasm from pupils or head teacher. Tuesdays simply reinforced that Monday hadn’t lived up to its potential.

Tuesdays where she had to teach her horrible Year 10s twice and on the back of very little sleep were the hardest of all.

Tuesdays where she was caught yawning at the kettle by her pregnant ex girlfriend, Regina might as well not bothered to get out of bed in the first place.

“Late night?” Robyn inquired, circumnavigating Regina to get to get the cupboard and retrieve a cup. “Look,” Regina glanced down at the hand that had been placed upon her shoulder, clearly she had neither responded or removed herself from the situation quick enough, “I’ve got another four months before my maternity leave starts can we just pretend to get on, at work at least?”

“You teach P.E. by the time you go on maternity leave the kids will be using you as a ball,” she muttered, removing Robyn’s patronising hand from her.

“Clearly not,” Robyn sighed, tucking a couple of errant hairs behind her ear.

“Perhaps-” but whatever retort has been about to emerge from Regina’s lips was cut off by a new set of hands on her shoulders as she was steered away from the conversation.

“Regina!” Katherine beamed at her a little too enthusiastically, “I’m so glad I caught you, I wanted to speak to you about the gothic novel we’re giving the Year 12s,” Regina’s Head of Department kept talking about the required reading, and last minute changes the exam board had introduced, as Regina found herself farther and farther away from not only her ex-girlfriend but the coffee she’d gone into the staff room to make in the first place. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Regina rubbed at her temples once Katherine had released her, “just another great reminder why so many people warned me not to get involved with someone-”

“Married?”

“I was going to say ‘work with’,” she huffed, “and you know damn well Robyn and Mark had been separated for almost a year by the time we started sleeping together.”

“Still married though.”

“She’d moved out, she had her own flat and a divorce lawy-” Katherine’s hand went up to silence her.

“We’re not having this conversation again,” Regina was told briskly as Katherine looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go to form, but at lunch time you’re going to tell me why Emma Jones was spotted coming out of your house this morning.”

“Swan,” Regina muttered to Katherine’s retreating figure and a corridor filled with students.

Yet another reason why living and working in the same town was a terrible lifestyle choice. She couldn’t breath without everyone talking about it or someone posting a picture of it on the small town’s rediculous Facebook page.

Regina looked at her own watch.

By her estimation she had two minutes to down a scorching cup of coffee before the bell rang for morning registration. She could risk taking it with her to her form room, but the bell was about to go and she’d never navigate the hallways without scolding one of the pupils or—worse—herself. The lid to her travel cup was still missing, she suspected it would appear on her desk again when she saw taught the Year 10s period three, she further suspected that that would be the one lesson that Tillman boy would be early for class, sat smugly in his seat ‘ready to learn’, a smile plastered upon his face.

She looked at her watch.

One minute.

She vaguely remembered an episode of a sitcom, somewhere in the back of her mind she pictured one of the characters spooning a mouthful of instant coffee into his mouth and chasing it with water—fresh from the kettle—down his throat.

She looked back to the door of the staff room, she really didn’t want to have to face Robyn again. She needed to move to a different town or find a new job. Or to move to a new town and get a different job. More than anything at this moment she needed Emma Swan to not have woken her up in the early hours of the morning drunkenly crying about the fact her son had left for university.


	2. Two Nil Down

** Two Nil Down **

Regina smelt her perfume before she sat down. She listened to the scrape of the chair against the tiles. She felt the movement of the table as Emma, graceful as ever, leant her elbows upon it and nearly toppled the entire thing over. Only once her friend was truly settled did Regina put down her paper and acknowledge the guest sharing her table at the café.

“You look a mess,” Regina told her, folding her newspaper and laying down beside her coffee cup.

“And ‘hello’ to you too. Yes, it is a lovely day,” Emma replied as she picked up the paper and flipped to the back pages, “hopefully the weather will remain nice for a couple more days.”

“Are you stopping?” Regina appraised Emma’s running gear, the sweat evident on the younger woman’s face, the strands of hair sticking out at all angles despite the pony tail that had been meant to contain it.

“Killian’s got the football on,” Regina caught Emma glancing at the clock hanging above the counter, “I’m good for at least another hour.”

Regina caught the waitress’ eye, pointed to her cup and signalled for two more cappuccinos. Emma usually drank her coffee black but Regina knew that Emma enjoyed picking at the chocolate covered froth and would suffer the milky coffee as a consequence.

“What are you doing?” Regina eventually asked Emma; tired of watching her tut at the paper as she angrily turned the pages.

“I’m looking for the job section.”

“I don’t think newspapers have had a job section in years. You need to look on your phone.”

“I’ve run out of data,” Emma huffed, dropping the paper back down not nearly as neatly as Regina had placed it.

Regina unlocked her phone and slid it along the table. “You know I could hire a cleaner if you can’t find anything.”

“You house has never needed a cleaner,” Emma muttered, tapping away at the mobile.

“It might do since the nanny-“

“Au Pair,” Emma corrected.

“-moved out.”

“I moved out two years ago, not that you really needed a nanny-“

“Thought you were an Au Pair?” Regina smirked, trying to finish her coffee before the next one arrived.

“-any more than you need a cleaner.”

“So come to my house each day, use my computer and improve your GCSEs, maybe get some A Levels, on the Open University. Then you can get a better job than not cleaning my house.”

“Still doesn’t solve the job problem though,” Emma sighed as she accepted the fresh coffee from the waitress.

“I’m going to pay you to not clean my house. I thought that was established,” Regina thought the premise was simple, but Emma was looking at her with an arched eyebrow in a way that made Regina feel stupid. Regina hated feeling stupid. “What?”

“And how am I going to pay for the Open University course?”

“I’m going to pay for that too,” again Regina didn’t understand why Emma was being so obtuse.

“Why are you doing this?” Emma was shaking her head, it seemed more than confusion almost distress. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because you’re Danny’s little sister. Because you’re-“

“Don’t,” Emma stood so quickly her chair scraped obnoxiously against the tiles. Regina looked around and found the whole café looking back at her.

“Emma,” she tried to get the younger woman to sit back down.

“I’ve got to get back to Killian,” Emma told her, patting down her trousers before clearly realising she was in her running gear and had no pockets.

“It’s okay,” Regina waved her away, “I was always going to pay for the coffee. Go back to your husband, I hope Newcastle are winning.”

“They were two down when I left,” Emma shrugged as she headed to the door, “why do you think I went for a run?”

There was so much Regina wanted to say to Emma but the eyes of everyone else upon her held her tongue. She remained glued to her seat, forced to watch as Emma popped her headphones back in and ran off back in the direction of her home and husband.

Regina grabbed her phone from beside the half drunk cup of coffee Emma had left behind. Unlocking her phone she found it not to be on  Indeed  or any other kind of recruitment site but rather her son’s Facebook page.

Regina stared down at his image; Henry was grinning ear to ear, his arm wrapped around a girl that was decidedly not the girl he’d gone travelling round Europe with, a beer bottle half empty, and his eyes far too glazed over to give any mother comfort. He looked happy.

Had Facebook been around when Regina went to university, she’d have no doubt plastered her wall with similar photos. Danny’s arm wrapped tightly around her. The two of them against the world.

If she looked in the box buried at the back of her wardrobe, the box hidden beneath seldom worn shoes and clothes that had fallen from their hangers that she promised she was going to pick up one day; if she looked in that box she would find a couple of old photographs, kept safe in their original  _ Boots _ envelop, of she and Danny looking every bit as drunk as their son did on Facebook.

Regina pocketed her phone and went back to reading her newspaper, while her eyes scanned the words printed on the page her mind was fixed solely on thoughts of Emma Swan.

*

Regina looked at the dying flowers in her hand. They were pathetic and she hated herself for buying them, but it was after 4pm on a Sunday—it was these flowers or no flowers. As another petal fell, she started to think ‘no flowers’ would have been the way to go.

Hopefully the overpriced bottle of wine she’d also bought at from the  _ Londis  _ on the corner would more than make up for them.

Disregarding the petals falling from one of the flowers that was already dead, she knocked on the door and tried not to find too much fault with the remaining chrysanthemums as she waited for the door to be answered.

“Regina?” Jim frowned at her as she thrust the wilting daisies into one of his hands and the rosé into his other.

“Beard’s coming along nicely I see,” she commented for lack of anything better to say.

“Katherine!” Regina leant away from him as Jim shouted down the hall, “Your Work Wife is here!”

“Must you call me that?” she sighed as he finally stepped aside and allowed her into his home.

“Regina?” Katherine appeared from the kitchen with a glass of wine in her hand.

“When Henry left for uni you told me to come round for dinner that first Sunday, I declined, and you told me it was a standing invitation.”

“Yes, but that was weeks ago!” Regina stood awkwardly in the hallway waiting for Katherine to decide her fate. “Guess I’ll put more pasta on then,” her friend eventually shrugged, beckoning Regina to follow her back into the kitchen.

As Regina looked around the room she realised that, despite the fact she and Katherine only lived a couple of roads apart from each other, she hadn’t actually ever been in her friend’s home before.

They’d been friends since Katherine had joined Sollith Academy as the new Head of English six years ago. Katherine and her husband, Jim, had then moved into the town a couple of years later; Katherine claimed she’d tired of the forty minute drive from Carlisle each morning and had fallen with the small seaside town’s charms.

Regina had been invited round countless times but she’d always used Henry as an excuse; the pair of them ignoring the fact that he was a teenager and she had a live in nanny. Childcare had never been the issue; by the time Katherine had moved to the quiet town that Regina had lived in all her life, she had a child that barely needed caring for at all.

Yet Regina never accepted her friend’s invitation.

“I need a favour,” she told Katherine hurriedly.

“Why Regina Mills,” her friend smiled at her, glasses steaming from where she’d been leaning over the saucepan of pasta, “and here I thought the deceased flowers were a house warming gift.”

Regina looked guilty over at Jim who was doing his best to arrange the sad little bouquet into reasonable presentation in a vase, more petals falling as he tried to hide the brown stems behind marginally greener ones.

Katherine put a hand on Regina’s before undoing the screw top of the no doubt ghastly wine Regina had provided, “Let’s have supper first, and then we can get to why you’re here,” she suggested as she poured the three of them a glass.

They made small talk around Katherine’s dining room table as they ate the spaghetti bolognese that had been quickly bulked out to serve three rather than the two expected. Passing time discussing Jim’s work, the weather, and other banal topics deemed safe accompaniments to supper. 

Jim disappeared off to the pub after the washing up had been dealt with, a kiss on the cheek to his wife and a  _ next time you come over I like IPAs  _ by means of goodbye to Regina.

“So,” Katherine asked once they were curled up on the sofa in the living room, each of them hugging a glass of wine far nicer than the bottle Regina had bought, “what is this favour?”

“You know you’re always saying you wish you had a cleaner?” Katherine raised her eyebrow before pointedly looking around her immaculate living room, “I’m not saying you  need a cleaner, just that you want one.”

“First time in my home and you insult it.”

Regina rolled her eyes, Katherine knew she wasn’t saying that and she was getting frustrated with herself.

“Emma needs a job. You want a cleaner,” Regina said matter of factly, “Needing one is immaterial to the issue.”

“And the money to pay Mrs Jones?”

“Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?” Katherine asked, sipping at her wine as if you prove her innocent demeanour.

“Insist on calling her Mrs Jones, as if you don’t know her first name and haven’t got drunk with her on several occasions?”

“Because you need reminding that she’s married,” Katherine dropped her tone so it was soft and gentle, a tone a child might receive from a concerned parent rather than a work colleague. Regina merely moved along the sofa so Katherine’s coddling hand fell from her knee. “Don’t be annoyed with me, you know your reputation with married women.”

“Robyn and Mark were separated-“

“And now they’re happier than ever and about to have their first child.”

“She cheated on me you know,” Regina crossed her arms and placed one leg over the other, no longer comfortable on Katherine’s plush sofa.

“My friend Ursula is opening up a seafood restaurant in Carlisle. She’s looking for staff,” Katherine clarified her quick change of a topic they’d hashed out countless times now , “it would be a zero hours contract, minimum wage but-“

“It would be a job,” Regina beamed at her.

“A job not entirely beholden to you, no less,” Katherine nodded. “We’ve been friends ever since I moved here,” Katherine noted as she topped up their wine glasses and relaxed back into the sofa, “and this town talks, yet neither you nor the town has ever managed to tell me what exactly the deal is with you and Mrs- Emma,” Katherine quickly amended after a stern look from Regina.

“There is no deal,” Regina said simply. “Danny and I adopted a baby, neither of us wanted to give up work, we hired Emma as a nanny.”

“And in the thirteen years since...”

“Since my would-be wife died?” Regina finished Katherine’s sentence, toying with the promise ring that still adorned her left hand.

“You and Emma never...?”

“You may accuse me of having a predilection for married women, but straight women...?” Regina left her sentence to hang in the air just as Katherine had let hers before. “Besides, she and Danny were practically sisters. They grew up together.”

“That doesn’t stop me from thinking that Jim’s brother is hot,” Katherine scoffed. “He’s a fireman and in another life I would happily slide down his pole,” Regina swatted at her arm disgusted with the crassness emanating from her boss in an attempt to stop her from elaborating any further.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was I silly for posting a new story during SQSN reveal, probably. Was it sillier of me to start a new writing project at the start of a new academic year, definitely!!
> 
> Thank you for all you reading and kudos’ing my last chapter. Hope you like this one too.
> 
> See you all next week,
> 
> 88 :D

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys think :D
> 
> Have a good week everyone,
> 
> 88


End file.
